VOA常速英语2015--用3D打印技术生产复古跑车（在线收听）

用3D打印技术生产复古跑车

Cars with parts made by 3D printers are already on the road, but engineers are still learning about this new technology. While testing the possibility of printing an entire car, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy recently created an electric-powered replica of an iconic sports roadster.

AC Cobra, also known as Ford/Shelby Cobra, is an Anglo-American, two-seater sports car, manufactured intermittently since 1962. It competed in a number of road races but, because it was so expensive, it never sold in large numbers.

“眼镜蛇”车型，也叫“福特/谢尔比眼镜蛇”，是一款英美联合生产的两座跑车，自1962年以来间歇有所生产。这款车参加了多次公路赛，但由于价格昂贵，从未得到大规模生产。

Attempting to bring it back as a retro sports car, Ford unveiled a modernized version at the Detroit Auto show in 2004.

福特公司希望将这款车作为复古跑车重新推出，2004年在底特律汽车展上推出了一款现代化的版本。

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy recently displayed yet another version, this time with electric propulsion and a plastic body printed in a 3D printer.

美国能源部研究人员最近展出了另一款车型，这款车是电动的，车身是用3D打印机打印的塑料车身。

Robert Ivester of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office says the goal wasn't to build a Cobra. Instead, researchers wanted a way to test several things relevant to printing large-scale objects.

能源部先进制造技术办公室的罗伯特·艾夫斯特说其目标并不是生产“眼镜蛇”，研究者希望想办法测试与打印大型物件有关的东西。

“The capability to balance thermal loads was an important one, the ability to achieve very, very high-quality, professional-grade surface finish, the ability to custom design around components that we were going to put in. So, this example has one motor and battery but we could relatively easily change over to a completely different motor and battery, power train, suspension system, because of 3D printing," said Ivester.

“平衡热负荷的能力是重要的一方面，以及达到非常高质量、专业级别的表面抛光的能力，对我们投入的零件进行定制设计的能力。这款车有一个马达和电池，但有了3D打印，我们可以比较容易地将之改造为完全不同的马达、电池、传动系和悬架系统。”

The flexibility of 3D printing proved to be a great advantage. Ivester says the car was built in six weeks by a group of six people at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee.

3D打印的灵活性已被证明是巨大的优势，艾夫斯特说这款车是由6个人组成的小组在田纳西州橡树岭国家实验室里花了6周时间制成的。

"It’s printed in about six pieces – there's one piece that's the core chassis and mechanical structure. And the front end and the back end of the body were each produced in a couple of pieces that were joined to each other and then bolted on to the chassis," he said.

“它是由六个部分打印成的，一个是核心底盘和机械结构，以及由几个部分拼接而成的车身前端和后端，然后用螺丝连接到底座上。”

During tests at the National Transportation Research Center, the car reached 128 kilometers per hour, with acceleration of about eight seconds to 100 kmh. Not quite as fast as cars on the road today but respectable. The real value of 3D printing is its speed, and versatility.

在国家交通研究中心进行的测试中，这款车达到每小时128公里的速度，能在8秒钟加速达到100公里每小时，并不像如今路上的汽车那么快，但是可以接受的。3D打印的真正价值在于速度和多功能型。

One of the most important advantages of large-scale 3D printing for the automotive industry could be the manufacture of molds and dies for sheet metal car body parts, usually a critical production bottleneck.

3D大规模打印对于汽车业来说最重要的优势在于车身钣金部分的模具生产，这通常是制造业中关键的瓶颈。

“With a metal mold they’re going to start from a monolithic metal block and machine away all the pieces that they don’t need. And the finishing process just takes long. So the typical response time for an automotive scale mold is at least nine months. And we can do it in 48 hours with printing," said Ivester.

“有了金属模具，就可以从单片金属块开始生产，切除掉所有不需要的部分，后整理工序比较耗时，汽车模具一般需要至少9周的时间来生产，但用打印技术我们可以在48小时内完成。”

Ivester says his department is now researching whether 3D printing of molds and dies could be used to build parts for wind turbines.

艾夫斯特说能源部目前在研究3D打印模具是否可以用来制造风力涡轮机的零部件。